For people working in ISP, Akamai is sound familiar. But a lot of people ask me how Akamai Server work ? Here we go:
* Akamai's customer (bbc, cnn, microsoft, yahoo, etc) pay to Akamai
* Akamai put servers to ISPs around the worlds for free
* Akamai server software is squid that have been modified. So remember, Akamai server is working like cache engine. If Akamai server doesn't have the content, it will find the content to the nearest other akamai servers. But if it's found in its cache, it will deliver that content.
* Normally content in Akamai servers are heavy contents like image, downloaded files.
* When you go to www.yahoo.com, it won't go to akamai server for the html file. But inside of html file (images files) will point to the nearest location Akamai server of users/clients.
* How Akamai can point to your nearest Akamai servers ? By DNS ! So your DNS configuration in PC/notebook will determine which akamai servers will be located for you. So use your ISP's DNS server instead other DNS.
* Why DNS ? Akamai DNS server will check if the resolving DNS are from range IP address of ISP A, it will give Akamai servers that located in ISP A.

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